High frequency words also know as sight vocabulary are the yellow words that I have sent home for your child to learn to read in September.
Your child will come home with a list of words to learn to read throughout most of their Primary School education. There are relevant high frequency words for reception, Year 1, year 2 and year 3. There are also medium frequency words to learn as they become older in year 4, 5 and 6.
Our expectations are that your child will be competent in spelling all of these words too as they move on in their Primary education.
These words cannot be built up or sounded out as they do not make any sense.
For example if you sounded out the word 'come' you would be unable to decipher from the sounds how the word should read.
When I first handed out the words in September a letter accompanied the words followed by subsequent blog posts explaining strategies on how to teach them. In addition I also offered parent sessions to help you help your child with reading and lots of you attended.
High Frequency Words are best tackled 5 at a time. Write them out on pieces of card numerous times and place them around your house- bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom walls are places where I posted them for my own children. Also on the wall up the stairs was another great place as the used to try to read them before moving up to the next step.
The more often a child sees the words and has opportunities to remember how the word looks and sounds will help them to memorise and read them. Once they have mastered reading those 5 words then move on to the next 5.
You could play matching games or pairs.
You can look at the words and say them in a high, low or monster/fairy type voice.
You could look at the shapes of the words and guess what they could be. You could count the letters in a word and say what it begins with and then say the word to trigger a visual or auditory memory response.
They need constant exposure to the words everyday. Children will struggle to learn to read them if the words are kept in their bags and they only see them sporadically.
It's a hard slog at the beginning but the reward is huge and once they start to gain in confidence and exposure they learn to read them quickly.
Parents are often concerned that their child is slow to move on through the reading scheme books and usually it's because the very early stages of reading and learning these common words have been missed and the child lacks skills in tackling these types of words as they have only learned to read by building up and sounding out.
Once a child masters how to read words that frequently appear in all texts, then actually reading a book with text becomes easier and the child feels successful.
It's not a race to learn them and please remember that children learn at different rates too. As long as regular exposure, teaching and opportunities for consolidation are given then they will be successful.
If you wish for me to demonstrate techniques and strategies again then please pop in and ask and I will run another few parent workshops.
Make a note in your child's reading diary when they have worked on these words at home with you. This makes me aware of the frequency of exposure to the words and helps me to identify if there is a specific problem with learning to read. For instance if a child is having 5 minutes of exposure a night to these words and after a period of a month they still cannot grasp reading some of them then I can put additional intervention strategies in place at school. Many parents, who's children are able to read all the words, have been doing this from the beginning.
I am very pleased that parents have been asking for help because it shows how seriously you value your child's education and what we do in school. If you have any further questions then please come and see me.
Thank you for your support.
Mrs James.
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